Upgrading an existing Reward Flight Saver booking – wrinkle repricing?

[patrickjrobinson]

Hi All

I’ve got a booking to the US, made with Avios and a 2-4-1 – and priced as a Reward Flight Saver. I’ve just noticed that there are now reward seats in First available, and wanted to amend my booking accordingly.

In days gone by, my experience is that this has been a simple switch: phone the call centre, make the change request, pay the £35pp and pay the change in Avios.

Just now, the Global Call centre said that they couldn’t do this, because my Club booking is priced as RFS, but that doesn’t apply to the alternative First booking – and they can’t just charge me the difference in taxes and fees. Instead, they’re telling me to CANCEL the existing Club booking, and make an entirely new one in the First cabin (assuming, of course, that those seats don’t go in the meantime…)

Has anyone else experienced this? If so, it seems like a minor downside wrinkle in Reward Flight Saver… You’re basically committed to Club, even if First seats become available later…

[patrickjrobinson]

Update… called back again and was miraculously put through to a UK agent still working at close to 11pm… she sorted it all out with zero fuss. Told me that the Delhi agent was talking nonsense – and even got her supervisor to listen back to the call to hear what he’d said… Panic over.

[NorthernLass]

Mixing F and CW since RFS pricing came in does complicate the surcharges and they’d have to (presumably) refund you some avios as well as charging extra fees so it could either genuinely not be possible, or the agent doesn’t know how to do it (surprisingly common these days).

I always thought that changing an avios booking involved some degree of cancelling and rebooking (even if just one leg) anyway?

The most cost effective way to have mixed cabins is to book each leg separately, would this be an option?

If you’re really concerned about the F seats going, you could HUACA and you may well get an agent who can help more.

Edit – lol you were quicker than me but I was right about HUACA 😂

[NorthernLass]

Just out of interest, what was the revised cost?

[Alex G]

Best option would have been to call You First, but glad you got it sorted.

[TGLoyalty]

Was the issue that it was a return booking and you only wanted to upgrade one leg? As mentioned could be the other person just didn’t know what they were doing. YouFirst was the way to go 🙂

[Ihar]

You First every time. They know what they are talking about. On occasion they have bent over backwards when flight schedules were altered to meet our needs.